When I Cast Your Shadow

July 15, 2017
Porter (Vassa in the Night, 2016, etc.) presents a ghost story in which the dead wait on the far side of dreams. Dashiell, a white boy with irresistible gray eyes and strawberry-gold hair, is two months dead. His younger siblings, 16-year-old twins Ruby and Everett, also white but not nearly so beautiful, know this, but they're also starting to realize that he isn't actually gone. He's come back for them. Ruby would do anything to get her beloved older brother back, but Everett isn't quite sure where he stands; both must examine whether Dashiell is a danger to them--and perhaps always was. They also have to decide who they are in relation to the force he's forever been in their lives. The story's uneven, with prose that sometimes moves from poetic to overwrought and characters that vacillate between compelling and absurd. Nevertheless, it delivers a deliciously disturbing and engaging portrait of the complexities of familial love and takes readers to the boundaries between innocence and corruption, self-preservation and sacrifice, the dreaming and the dead. Alternating first-person chapters (including all three siblings and the voice of the villain, among others) aid in portraying the nuances at play. A haunting tale of possession that explores the ghostly landscape of dreams and nightmares--but more importantly, the particular dynamics among siblings, both oppressive and redemptive. (Horror. 14-18)

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Starred review from July 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Teen twins Ruby and Everett have very different feelings about their older brother's overdose. Closer to Dashiell and often oblivious to his dramatics and manipulations, Ruby is devastated while awed by and jealous of Dash. Everett understands the strain their brother created within the family. Though Dash is dead, he won't leave. Visiting Ruby in her nightly dreams, Dash wheedles her into consenting to ghostly possession. But unsatisfied, the ghost sets his sights on Everett as well. Dash says he's back to tie up loose ends, but is he actually running from something? Flowery language and unusual descriptions pair a gritty, drug- and anxiety-filled reality with a bizarre dreamscape. The story is a cycle of unhappy emotions. Characters experience grief and loss while trying to navigate one warped situation after another, both in the real world and in the Land of the Dead. Dash, the connection among all the characters, is wildly unreliable, and this central trait drives the plot, shaping relationships among, and decisions made by, others both dead and alive. But despite the often unhealthy bonds among characters, Porter offers a poignant consideration of how far we will go for the people we love. Heartache, possession, strong language, sex, murder, and just a hint of incest, all with a supernatural twist-readers searching for something different will certainly find it here. VERDICT An excellent selection for libraries serving teens.-Maggie Mason Smith, Clemson University, SC

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2017
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* When he was alive, Dashiell Bohnacker's sly charm, gall, and penchant for reckless abandon were so dangerous that his own father wished he'd never been born. It's been just two months since Dash's lethal heroin overdose, and his old habits are already stirring up trouble in the Land of the Dead. After betraying the Land's almost hundred-year-old evil overlord, Aloysius, what's left of Dash (the dead don't retain human forms) is on the run. For now, he's found safety by possessing the body of his ever-adoring sister, Ruby. But Everett, Ruby's twin, is catching on. So too are Aloysius and his fiending horde of dejected specters. While chapters shift between various first-person perspectives, including those of Ruby, Everett, Dashiell, and Aloysius, each of Porter's (Vassa in the Night, 2016) characters remains dynamic, distinct, and vividly realized. In fact, in Porter's hands, even undead, skinless slivers of shadow (particularly one named Mabel) burst to life. The feverish magic of dreams weaves the beauty of Brooklyn into the barren borderlands of the dead, and one person's ability to see something fierce and glorious in another has the power to change the world or, at the very least, a life. A wildly innovative, whip-smart, and utterly spellbinding testament to family, memory, and loveand the messes and miracles of eachpoised to possess legions of readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)